Brewery Closings

In the past few weeks about six breweries have closed their doors. Some people have wondered if this will be a growing trend as we have literally hundreds of new breweries opening this year around the country. We have three new ones in Colorado Springs and about forty or so in the whole of Colorado state. Have we reached a saturation point? I don't think so, in fact, I'm not sure we're anywhere near that point and we won't be until breweries are filling up our neighborhoods. We see many breweries expanding and many new ones filling in the gaps. I wasn't even going to mention these closings on the blog but then I read an interesting post on Appellation Beer titled Brewery Closings: No Trends Here Folks...

I'll direct you to that website since that's where the discussion is. I also wanted to share a comment left on that page by Jeff Alworth of Beervana:

If craft brewing was in trouble, we’d expect to see established breweries with a record of success closing. Of course, that’s not happening. In fact, for every poorly-conceived brewery that fails, another one manages to hang on in spite of their faults. That’s how strong the market is....

...Consolidation will inevitably happen as the market plateaus or contracts. But as long as it’s growing, big breweries and little breweries can live in happy coexistence. You happened to select a brewery in my home state as your example, Stan, and I can confirm your view. Deschutes sells more beer in Oregon than any other brewery and the Northwest remains its main market. Yet Washington and Oregon are seeing unprecedented new brewery openings. A bunch of formerly-small breweries founding in the past decade (Block 15, Oakshire, 10 Barrel, Ninkasi, Fort George) are growing like weeds. Room enough for everyone here. Now, at least.

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